The Ghost of Christmas Past
by SaintJacTheGingerNinja
Summary: It's Christmas Eve and Twelve can't help but settle into painful nostalgia... until a little girl awakens him from his dreams of olden times, and bestows the greatest gift he could ever receive. A chance to change the past. Rose/Ten. Twelve.
1. Chapter 1

**Hi, well I'm new to the Doctor Who fanfiction community,but not at all to the fandom! This is my first Doctor Who fanfiction, however, and my first time writing the characters, so apologies for any OOC moments - especially with Twelve! I really appreciate any reviews/comments. **

**I have become very nostalgic lately, and I have started reading Doctor Who fanfiction again... and this is what happened. It was meant to be a quick one-shot, but then it got too long for my liking, so it may go on a bit... but it is supposed to be a Christmas fic, I swear! It'll get there eventually. Oh, and one more thing, have a very merry Christmas!**

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><p>Together they cruised the celestial shatters of distant deep plum nebulas, screeching like wild things as their blue box tossed their adrenalized legs away from beneath them, chuckling as they then became a tangled, pheromonal mess of limbs and hair. The blonde's tongue hitched behind her front teeth, and a gorgeous smile crumpled her face. Atop of her, the Doctor reciprocated with an equally deserved beam.<p>

Gods... she was the epitome of human beauty. He could rarely concentrate around her.

He scrambled up and away from his thoughts with a wobble that misplaced his flocks of chocolate hair - unbefitting of his once brash and proud assertions that his russet tresses were really, actually, implausibly gratify-defying. His sidekick had been incredulous, bursting into episodic fits of wrinkling laughter as he, like an infantile, pouted, insistent of his hair's somehow 'inexplicable' credentials.

His long slender hand offered itself up for her as if by some marvellous second-nature, and she safely hooked her fingers around his, goggling at how, just as a key compliments a lock, they seemed rather fitting, slotting into place wholly, wholly-

_Holy crap!_ Rose landed on her behind with a mousy bump, startled. What the hell?

It was then she heard the Doctor's shrill whimper of cackles, his mirth cultivating in a reluctant scrape of spilling tears from his grinning eyes. The bastard. What a complete pillock.

'Oi! S'not funny!' But she couldn't hamper the small giggle from permeating her words.

'Well,' he accentuated the exclamation, 'it sort of is.' Her glare threw him in another direction. 'Well,' he began again, 'if sort of actually means really, really, really, incredibly not at all funny in any way. Ever.' He took a sheepish nod.

'You need to buy yourself a new dictionary, mate. Oh, and when you do, look up sod. There'll be a little picture of you right there, and the caption will read, "The Oncoming Sod, King of all bloody-minded sods.'

He cocked an eyebrow, 'Been there, done that, actually got a whole fruit stand from it... long story, very long story...' He chattered off to the distance, in a world only he could see. The blonde coughed.

He snapped back his eyes, returning to the present, and continued, 'Planet named Sodonia, inhabited by the great Sodianoxyraxcatarian people, or for time-saving purposes often named the-'

'No way,' she waggled a finger at him. 'You're having me on.'

'Do I ever?' He flashed her a somewhat ambiguous grin, and she could tell no more or no less from it. Hell, he was unbelievable! _Unbelievably... gorgeous_. Her internalised voice flamed into an externalised blush, and she squirmed uncomfortably.

The Doctor was apparently unawares. 'Anyway, you are speaking to her majesty Queen Doctor of the Sods, saviour of Sodonia.' He studied her face; did he just imagine - no, couldn't have been.

'Queen.'

He shrugged nonchalantly. 'They're a gender-neutral planet, with an extreme anatomical evolution. They get confused.'

She shook her head at him. He whirled back from her, fiddling with his extrapolator, pumping the wotsit; he had bowed, accentuating the curvature of his neck, the plumpness of the lump affixed unshakably in his throat. He tried to swallow it down.

A few moments passed. 'Rose?' She met his gaze, instantly, passionately.

'How long are you going to stay with me?' The grotesque shadow scratched into his eyes and crouched there, peeling his scab of personal boundaries with a squelch.

She patched up his blinding insecurities with a sparkling, rose-petal smile of which she must have sought inspiration from her name.

'Forever.' It was merely a whisper in his darkness, yet is shone brilliant in gold, and he was awakened to her devotion in a spur, a rush of feeling. He trusted her completely, loved her fully and entirely. And he believed her. They would stay together always.

But it wouldn't last! It wouldn't last! 'Er... hello?' His reverie ripped. He drew, no whipped, open his eyelids, like rumpled Japanese shutters.

'Er... hello, mister?' That wasn't Rose.

She wasn't there.

The TARDIS undulated before him, some monstrous kraken of which he felt submerge his subconscious in ripples. He risked a glance down at his steely hands; they wrinkled, elongated, pearly white fingers returning like worms to a corpse.

'Mister?'

The Doctor squeezed his head, as if hoping to trap his old memories. 'Shut up! Shut up, shut up!' His Scottish accent erupted forth.

'Oi!'

And then he awoke into his real world. The earth was hard and cold underneath him, the grass stony under winter's harsh, numbing breath of which had given him immediate whiplash. The titanic, age-old oaks beside him crackled their own private song, with the lonely moonlight waltzing wretchedly upon the dark floor in response.

The Doctor wiped down his face. He was seated he figured, almost slumped perhaps. And something was definitely digging into the groove of his back...

He turned. Aha! The old girl! He patted the TARDIS affectionately. But wasn't he usually inside when he was flying her?

He sniffed. Earth, like that didn't happen often. He supposed the TARDIS wanted to comfort him.

In a brisk assault of the senses, he became aware of the small presence beside him, and the pair of eyes so bemusedly focused on his ship.

He put on his grumpy face. 'What? Can't you tell I was sleeping?' The Doctor lectured the five year old.

She regarded him with a fierce glower, cheeks flushing. It was quite unnerving, scary even. The Oncoming Storm, the saviour, the destroyer, of worlds, all stern in his previous reproach, felt himself taken aback by this small earthling.

'You 'ad your eyes open,' she insisted, pulling at her rucksack straps.

'Don't be so stupid. You had _your_ eyes closed.'

The girl frowned, opened her mouth to protest.

The Doctor dismissed her, 'Shh! Shh,' he regarded her for the first time, '... human child!' He waved his arms at her. 'Your constant mumbling fails to prove you're not as dim as the rest of them. So you can stop now. It's a waste of good oxygen.' Knotting her arms, the youngster grew a face of murder, and they lapsed into a silence.

The Doctor coughed, needing to form a embarrassing contradiction. 'What year is it?' She was unresponsive, regarding his words as an unbreakable law, just in order to aggravate. 'Oh come on. This isn't Mastermind. It's not a million pound question.'

She arched her eyebrow, considering this weird man in complete seriousness. Shrugging, she blasted, '1991. 24th December.'

'Ah, give the girl a gold star,' and as he processed her answer, 'Awful year.' He jumped up, slipped into his TARDIS. 'Don't want to stay around here too long.'

He sighed up at his machine, whirling, whining in the gloom.

These memories of _her_ he couldn't shake from him; his mind was a warzone, ablaze with regrets, oh a thousand regrets. Regrets for _his_ Rose. He knew he shouldn't feel this way; his torn hearts were scythed aeons ago, and he used to swear time was the universe's greatest healer. He only wanted one thing now, just the one: peace, some peace on Christmas Eve.

'What you doing?' It was the shrill whining again. What was it with these human children?

TO BE CONTINUED.


	2. Chapter 2

**I found writing Twelve quite hard this chapter, but hopefully he sounds okay! Thank you for reading, and I really love any reviews I get! Thank you :)**

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><p>The young girl shrugged off her rucksack, in clear wonder of her new surroundings, and it scaled down her back, slumping to the floor with a nasty clatter. The Doctor seethed quietly, felt the telepathic nudge of his TARDIS; she was not sparking as he had assumed - he felt a gentle warmth from her presence, a mental sedation.<p>

'If I throw a stick, will you shoo?' The TARDIS whined curtly at his discourtesy. What? He made a note to check her wiring.

The girl still looked upon him for an answer, steadfast in her approach.

He decided to match her antics. 'What are you doing?'

The child puffed proudly. 'I'm running away.'

This made the Doctor pause. Her words remarkably paralleled his life's wrinkled mantra, and he felt the soft threads of a tie between them entangle themselves in a intricate web of feeling. His head ached with empathy, with connection. His raised hackles jarred, as his eyes thawed from beneath their frost.

He'd started his running away back on Gallifrey, and he had never stopped.

'So am I,' he murmured gently. The girl settled down on the steps, and the Doctor hitched up his slim trousers before he did the same.

'But the difference between you and me, kid, apart from the whole super-intelligent Time Lord element,' he added as a side thought, 'is that you're wanted there,' he pointed to the dark blue doors, 'and I'm wanted here.' He brought back his arm.

The child shied away from him a little. 'That's not what Jim says,' she whispered.

'Why are you humans always so vague? I'd put you down for plain stupidity, if it wasn't for your microwavable lasagne. King Jimmy the third... Jim Carrey senior... Rosie and Jim... Oh no, why are your eyes doing that? Stop it. Does that thing you're doing come with an off switch?'

Red rimmed and terribly drizzly, the girl's gentle, auburn eyes looked up at him. The Doctor squirmed.

'Did it stop? I can't tell. Did you always look like that?' The girl sniffed, wiped her nose.

Silence skulked between them once again, the soft throb of the TARDIS core blanketing the hush.

'What you getting from Father Christmas?' The child offered up, after taking such a small amount of time to yield to the pressing ennui; it was like strong steel hands on her shoulders.

The Doctor sighed exasperatedly at the blonde creature.

'Your _thingy_ looks like it needs some _special medicine_,' she advised carefully, transfixed with something just above his right shoulder.

'And there it is - the ambiguity! You have a developed left prefrontal cortex, don't you? Why don't you use it once in a while? The only difference between your species and the great apes, and you dress it up in,' he grimaced spectacularly, 'fancy hair and repulsive headwear. Well, bully for you if you have an 'evolved' intellect, but you knuckle draggers stumbled through history with your prominent proboscises wedged right up - wait, what are you babbling on about?'

He locked on to her pathway of sight, and flipped round. There, on top of the blackboard that said-

Oh Gods. The scrawled, phantom-ashen script scribbled, whether by his own withered hand or another's he did not recall, or dare to, rather messily in chalk sent a slinking shiver through his binary spinal cords. He struggled over to the word, caressed the small hooks of the R's graceful legs, and the smooth curve of its underbelly.

Rose.

The TARDIS column blinked at him, as his mind whirred through a million possibilities. He was sure the void was impenetrable now - the walls of the universe were closed. Forever. He knew that all too well. No! He shook. Those thoughts were more pinstripes and leather - now he was grumpy, rude and definitely not ginger.

'Did you do this?'

The child barely cowered under his tough stare, for she was still drawn, unblinking, to the object atop the blackboard.

'Is this a batch of selective hearing?'

With no response, he swiped his eyes back to the point - a softly glowing rectangular prism. He frowned, momentarily wondering why on earth his superior senses hadn't picked up its incessant humming.

He snatched the _thing_ down, grasped it tightly. And then it hit him with the force of a thousand battle fleets.

He remembered why he was really here.

He had to get the kid out.


	3. Chapter 3

**Hello again! I would like to wish everyone a happy new year, and a huge thank you for the reviews, favourites, and follows.**

**Now this chapter is a product of many things. There I was, smelling my old Doctor Who BBC books, (I hope I'm not the only one that thinks they have a really distinctive smell), and I realised I could smell my childhood, and I knew I needed to continue this. So yeah, that was inspiring to a point. Also, I was listening to my Disney playlist (hardcore, I know) and the songs of 'Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron' (strictly not Disney I know, but they all fall into the same category, right?) and I thought to myself how wonderfully they reflected the story of Doctor Who from series 1 to 2, so that got me going a little bit. Hope you enjoyed that little insight into my life there.**

**Before I get carried away, enjoy!**

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><p>The device chuckled throatily at him, as if revelling in a private victory. The swollen capsule's red light stained the pasty white of his face into a darker anger. What the hell was he supposed to do? There was a human child in his presence, a human child that would not leave. He spared a glance at her rooted form. Stubborn spawn. She wore a smug smile as well as he wore a rugged Stetson. And yet there was something, something in her misguided smirk, in the misshapen twist of her rosy lips, he felt he liked, for whatever dim-witted reason.<p>

But that wasn't important. Not now. Flashes of images. Strange, corrupted memories trembling somewhere before the safety of sense. He couldn't make head or tail of most, though there seemed to be a frenetic idea, a grotesque idea, coursing, scraping, through his connective neurones.

Danger.

'No, no, no,' his hands fingered the miscellaneous switches. 'This is not good.' He elevated an infamous eyebrow at the child, clearly baffled. 'Not good at all.'

'Why?' Her soft reply dripped with concern.

He rounded on her until they were nose to nose, a crooked posture for him and a stretch for her. He was utterly serious. There was a pause.

'How did you spot it before me?' He exclaimed, ridiculously put-out. A tsunami of arms before her accentuated his point. 'Look at your eyes - they're too tiny for your giant face. How are you supposed to balance that thing on your teeny-weeny body?'

His rant fell upon unlearned ears, however, and he was met with nothing, nothing except the scream of the mechanism as it doubled in size. Damn.

'Oh now look what you've done,' he griped, examining it closely. He threw his eyes back at the girl. 'Stop it. The basketball-head is distracting - get that under control. Now.' The TARDIS spat at him, but he decided to ignore her.

Whisking out his sonic, he fiddled with the controls before a steady whistle confronted the shrieks of his huge, mechanical problem. The Doctor flicked the column repeatedly, deftly analysing.

Suddenly, his conclusion sprang at him, and his facade disappeared. It was quickly replaced by something else.

Worry.

He listened for a final moment. 'A bilinear tempus extrapolator with an added paradox matrix. Sodonian in nature, which means... a time-line extractor.'

Everything seemed attuned to him now, spare the minor canyon scooped out of his memories, and his face chalked. Time crawled past him, dragging feet of lead. This was... a weapon. He was mothering a weapon in his crooked, nervous hands. It seemed to him that nothing in life came without a shred of irony, cruelly laughing as if a spectator of a theatrical farce, and oh his life had been long, longer than most.

But this... this was no ordinary weapon, far from it. It was... impossible. Sheer, blinding white power bubbled from the small capsule encased in the middle, as if his slippery kraken returned to haunt him in its dark waters.

It would take such a great amount of artron energy to even form a milligram of this catastrophe, and to form this - well, for once, he did not know.

And that scared him.

How he had required said death bringer, he had no recollection of; hastily, he plundered mechanically through the erected forts of his mind, severed the shackles to old, forbidden, torturous thoughts.

Nothing.

Frustrated, he dug, deeper and more frantic by each passing minute. A time-line extractor... for that was what the monster claimed to be, in essence. A great big scalpel of which someone could manoeuvre to manipulate... time itself! And there would be no consequence... the paradox matrix saw to that. No wonder the TARDIS leered, had growled as an haemovariform.

Uncoiled, the world shot back to speed. He catapulted himself in very much the same fashion. Tearing a heavy, leather-bound book from its hospitable sanctuary, he launched it at the child, who promptly let it drop to the floor with a squeal.

'Human. Dismantling volume. Read the first two words. Go,' he instructed, a spark of an idea forming.

The child gathered it up gingerly. 'It's heavy!'

'Of course it is, it's bigger on the inside. The opposite I gather to your massive head.'

The child allowed herself a silent moment, and, with a tremulous pull of will, a word sprang from her scarlet lips. 'Bad...'

The Doctor muttered starkly, 'Take your time, it's not like I've got a whole universe to save.' The girl was immune, fortunately.

'Wolf...' And Time hauled his twisted legs no longer, curling, contorting, like some feral beast, into a rich mess of all limbs, stark still. The haze, the fog, of his mind seemed to clear, if only for a second, dispersing for the infiltration of an even brighter being: the light. _Her_ light. No! No! No! He strangled his distraction, beat the stragglers, the remainder of her out of his head. It couldn't be _her_.

'No, that's utter nonsense.' Was he convincing himself, truly? 'Keep saying things like that and you'll get yourself sectioned. The instructions, three lines down. Now.' His tone offered no room for debate.

'He huffed and he puffed, and he blew the house down.' Something about the eerie sing-song phrase doused him with fear, and yet he forced the corner of his brazen lips to twitch with triumph. 'Got you! Hand it over.' He snatched up the manual.

'First two words? Flux inhibition. Third line down? Dismantle the temporal fission by reversing the transcribing nanoversatility. Try to say that when you've had ten shots.'

The blonde allowed herself to frown. 'You're not real!' He nodded half to himself. 'And, by process of a diverse assessment of elimination, this isn't real. It hasn't been for a long time.'

He knew now. He'd touched the vainglorious minds of gods, and the repentant minds of daemons, however their corruption was negligible when he had once compared them to the idle bystander - the great Gallifreyan race. That was what he had disagreed with most of all - their monstrous laws. And, so, he hadn't been idle, oh he always interfered, and yet, he assumed, his, and only his, misshapen mind would have the immorality to punish him for the one time he could do nothing, say nothing, on that fateful day in Canary Wharf...

And who better to conjure up? His brain had a cruel sense of humour.

'Now off you pop back out of existence, Rose Marion Tyler.'

TO BE CONTINUED

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><p><strong>Sorry for the rambling at the end there, but you see that big, (not) red, (un)threatening button over there? You know what I do when I see a big, (not) red, (un)threatening button? I like to press it. ;) <strong>


	4. Chapter 4

**Hello again, and thank you for the reviews, favourites and follows! I really do love them, truly! **

**To me, the inner thoughts of Twelve sound a bit like the inner thoughts of Ten in this chapter, but I'm just excited because I'm writing Rose and Ten for the next chapter! Well, it is a Rose and Ten fanfiction, isn't it? It got a bit off track, I must say. **

**I hope you enjoy, and please review! **

**Warning: mentions of abuse, although not heavily. **

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><p>The Doctor felt sure he had figured his way out of this nonsense... the impossible weapon, the impossible girl. Frantically scrambling, he clasped onto his superior senses, only to find them brutally maimed, obviously due to the temporal disturbance of the world he had surely created. The TARDIS had felt it, the plain <em>wrongness<em> of the situation.

It pained him a great deal to admit it, but this was not the first, nor the second, or millionth, time his thoughts had lingered somehow interminably on the subject of his once dear companion. His pinstripe days were long gone, yet there seemed to be still an ember of old passion, and, now and again, he longed to stoke the fire. He never had the chance back when he was young, and naive. Oh yes, there had been moments, fanciful flickers of what he had assumed to be love. And had he ever acted upon it? He'd tried, once. And then he had cursed himself for being so idiotic, risking his hearts for the sake of a human who would wither and die.

And so he had remained stoic, incorrigible, ruling never to cross that bridge, never to entangle himself up in something he had never truly understood in fear of the vile, omniscient ogre lurking under his safety-net. And then his monsters had murdered them anyway.

The Doctor examined his mystery intently. Her chocolate eyes blenched as dusk drew in, beguiled the light away; they tapered into stubborn, suspicious slits as she judged him, distrustful, yet... inquisitive. That's what he lo- liked about Rose. Her wild sense of adventure matched his own. Seems like it still did, in his head.

He tinkered with the weapon-of-mass-destruction, willing it to mutate into some sort of bloody distraction. Someone gave his forehead a hard clout, and seconds afterwards he realised it was himself. Yes, he knew he had to wake up. He screwed into his eye sockets as if to draw conclusions from the stars and stripes, or at least rid himself of his vision.

There was a slow symphony of machines humming in the quiet. The scanners chattered ominously, primeval apes sparring in the skulking shadows.

'How did you know my name?' It would have been a demand if she had been any older.

His confusion sprouted. What was she still doing here? He thought he'd have been able to shake himself back by now.

'Are you one of mummy's _friends_?' He saw the way she subconsciously shivered, and his expression tightened.

Jackie has friends? Actual, real humans who want to ... do whatever people do? Do they know she is rather proficient at maternal martial arts? The Doctor had never liked the older woman.

'And who are they? Her cups of Tetley?'

And then the monitor exploded.

Twisted shards of shaved metal surfed through the shock wave of dust and debris, and shot inches away from his skull. Hideous, jaundiced tongues of fire sprung, spat, scratched at the central console like feral creatures lost to the unruliness, the intensity of unqualified fury. Books dropped five storeys, and thudded to the floor as if made of lead.

Then, they lifted themselves back upright as they convulsed in a convoluted show, spines hitching triangularly. They were sallow puppets, terribly strung along the air.

The Doctor started and reeled back, went to scoop Rose's small shoulders round and away, but was only met by a burning spark of electricity. He cursed, jerked his hand, looked at her for the first time.

Golden light coursed through her tiny body, amassing in a rich, off-yellow mess somewhere in her eyes. Wet tears crept furiously down her face, of which was contorted into an expression of such horror that he knew he would never ever forget.

Bad Wolf. The message struck him now. Perfect. The Doctor grimaced. Human beings were even stupid in his head.

But did he do this? Was it his fault? Of course it was! It was his dream, after all...

A book cuffed the back of his head. How - Rose. But, why on Gallifrey would he imagine this? He didn't have the time, nor the desire for a subdural haematoma.

Unless...

He touched Rose's temples, gritted through the pulsating zap of voltage that she conducted, and entered the basics of her mind for a few measly seconds, before -

He was thrown back by a surge of her power. Momentarily paralysed, he felt the considerable and unpleasant throb of his backside radiate from him. With a groan, he hulled himself up, brushing down any unexpected dust patches.

Not deterred, he raced through his mind for the information he had... stolen. His data banks were vast and stomach-dropping, but this was his domain. A few sparks blasted out on his left, a quick check and no, they weren't the one. A couple more... come on you useless old git!

There! There. A forty percent drop in the brainwave activity of her frontal cortex, which meant - she was dreaming, just as he was! That explained his ship's liking to her, for she wasn't a pigment of his wearied imagination, but she was almost, _almost_, here. But, why?

Rose burst with uncontrolled, glowing streams of light. Ah, the child was having a tantrum.

The TARDIS sent both of them her comforting, soothing warmth. The monitor crackled into life; it flickered its lids, black and white static splintering. It repeated this cycle for a few tense moments, and then morphed listlessly into a grainy picture.

Rose screamed. To him it sounded like a wounded thing. Her hands clasped around her red-spotted ears made him want to do the same.

'Rose?' The rough, cockney accent provoked two iridescent spates of attacking light: one struck the wall, and the other the console. The Doctor apologised to his old girl, immediately and profusely.

'Rose?' Somewhere in the real world there was the soft creak of a pink door. The Doctor watched as the stout man entered, as his heavy chest exhaled, and as he leered over the small, sleeping form of his child companion. Heavy exhilaration was hot in the air. The man crossed the box-like room in seconds, a considerable feat considering his size. He was eager, and zeal pushed him forward. His fat, twitching fingers peeled back the pleated, cerise duvet...

'Jimmy? What you doing in there? Rose's sleeping. Come to bed.' The reply seemed to be from none other than Jackie Tyler, albeit a much younger Jackie Tyler. The man, this _Jimmy_, could only sigh deeply, before, much slower this time, retreating towards his unfortunate commitment.

The Doctor felt sickened by the mere sight of him, and turned away from the offending present, burning wrathfully with his other storm-like persona. He looked too bloody familiar with that room. The bastard.

And then the final blast smashed into the device he held in his hands, galvanised the white essence of the weapon to expand, the rate exponential and implausible. It singed the Doctor's fingers, hissed as its mechanics shifted. Rose crumpled to the floor before him. He cursed, and cursed again. He tried the sonic. Nothing. He thought he would have more time.

Die in the dream world, die in the real world. He twiddled with the bleeping end. What could he do!?

Die in the dream world, die in the real world. He repeated his phrasing, hoping to drill in his situation.

Die in the dream world, die in the real world. He couldn't figure out what he needed. It was no use!

It was going to detonate. They were dead.

TO BE CONTINUED.


End file.
